In the middle of an ongoing debate over how the United States should respond to a series of alleged Russian cyber-attacks that U.S. intelligence agencies believe were

part of a concerted campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton and disrupt the presidential election, Donald Trump took to Twitter early Friday morning to applaud the

hacks, suggesting that they were a public service.

“Are we talking about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that the head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary questions to the debate?” Trump tweeted, referring to a leaked e-mail that showed interim DNC chair Donna Brazile had informed Clinton campaign manager Jennifer Palmieri about a question that would be asked in an upcoming primary debate.

While Trump has repeatedly dismissed claims that the Kremlin meddled in the presidential race - characterizing it as “ridiculous” and “just another excuse” - President Barack Obama has vowed to retaliate against Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, who is believed to have been directly involved in the hacking effort.

“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections ... we need to take action. And we will - at a time and place of our own choosing,” Obama said in an interview with NPR that will air on Friday. “Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.”

Trump isn’t alone in suggesting that whoever stole thousands of documents from the DNC and the personal e-mail account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta acted heroically when they handed them to WikiLeaks, which continued to release them online up until the final weeks of the election. “Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?” Putin said in a September interview with Bloomberg. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public,” he added, while denying Russia’s involvement.